1. Would it be selfish of me to say that it's the new TN-08? Suburban Shelby County now has it's own dedicated seat, and when Fincher moves on in a few years (he has term-limited himself), we'll have our own congressman again!

I also am a big fan of the new NC-04, also for selfish reasons, since I helped draw it and make it the glorious pack that it is.

2. Who's left in line (swivels head from side to side, sees an empty room)?

I doubt it. With Tipton County now in the district, it's so Memphis-centric and suburban that a rural candidate would need a very fractured field. Haywood, Lauderdale, Hardemann, and Lake Counties (and a few others to a lesser degree) will be casting most of their votes in the Democratic primary. All of the R state reps. from the non-Shelby County portions of the district represent areas that don't identify with other areas that are in the same boat, so forming a base would be hard. You might get a Fayette County or Tipton County candidate (say, Dolores Gresham or Barrett Rich), but I think that that's about as rural as it's going to go.

open seat primaries were more or less same story with a different song.

In 1994 Ed Bryant from Henderson TN swept the rural vote and beat 3 Shelby county foes. Now Ed had an advantage he had pushed a federal indictment of one of the Fords in late 1992 and early 1993. Clinton fired him as US attonery for west TN. So Bryant certainly had tons of friends in Shelby but would have lost a unified primary.

In 2002 Marsha Blackburn, from Williamson county, beat 3 Shelby counties for GOP nod to TN7.

Fincher has all of good GOP shelby now in TN8. I suspect 60% of GOP primary vote would be from Shelby with its finders keepers losers weepers in TN8. There was talk a one GOP candidate in 1996-2004 in TN7 but it came to nothing. GOP congressional incumbents, except in TN1, do not face serious primary battles. I say that even with a Wamp in CD3. Fincher has already lined up tons of Shelby support. He likely has a seat for life.

"GOP congressional incumbents, except in TN1, do not face serious primary battles."
Huh?? Who is going to run against Phil Roe? He has no primary battle that I know.

"I say that even with a Wamp in CD3."
Yes, Wamp won't beat Chuck Fleischmann but Scottie Mayfield (Dairy Corporation CEO) just might. Then again Wamp and Mayfield might split the anti-Fleischmann vote. Either way I would say that Fleischmann has a primary battle on his hands.

was less then clear. I was talking from a historical prespective and then mixed CD3 in there.

Phil Roe won his seat by beating a GOP incumbent in a primary. Congressman Reece, of CD1, was involved in several GOP primary wins and losses but other then that no GOP congressman in TN has ever lost a primary. So CD1 is the only seat ever to see a member turned out in primary.

I do not think Roe will be turned out in 2012 in a primary or likely in the future. He seems very well suited to the district and is popular in his area. Not Quillen like popular but popular. I was just noting that CD1 is the only GOP seat, that I can recall in TN, turning out a member. I can not recall any of the Duncans or Bakers having primary woes in CD2.

SC-2 Joe Wilson has no Democratic opponent. He was targeted by the DCCC in both 2010 and 2008. District was shored up in redistricting.
SC-1,3,4,5 Freshman- All have token Democratic opponenets and are Safe Republican. SC-5 Mick Mulvaney gets a pass from national Democrats and his district is likely off the table now.
SC-7 9 Democrats, 5 Republicans- Both Republican and Democrats will likely have a runoff. State Rep. Ted Vick is the clear frontrunner on the D side. Initial rating Lean/Likely Republican.
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.c...

I think giving SC-5 a pass doesn't speak well for the state and national party. Jim Clyburn is the 3rd ranking House Democrat and should have been able to recruit a viable candidate in a neighboring district. While SC 5 was shored up, it only went from 53 to 55% McCain.

*likely to endorse Romney soon
**may not endorse while primary is active, but will immediately hop aboard the Romney train when he's presumptive nominee
***will be dragged kicking and screaming to support Romney

probably won't come out big for Mitt. He still has hard feelings from 2008 and I doubt that I will be seeing him give a keynote at the 2012 convention. His speech in 08 was one of my favorites (Zell Miller in 04 being the other).

It was a fantastic speech that took Obama apart in the clear logical fashion that Rudy is known for (maybe it's NY blunt but whatever). I will never forget the parts where he was talking about leadership and how many times Obama voted present.

Rudy dropped out of the race by the time the NJ primary came up. It was between McCain and Romney and I was so disgusted by the way the primary turned out that I voted for Rudy anyway figuring it was the only time in my life that I would get to vote for a legend like that.

Since there was no decision today and the drop-dead date for any changes to be made is..tomorrow that means the interim maps (based this time on the state's maps) will be used for the 2012 elections. All fighting from this point forward is over 2014 and beyond.

That, and the State Senate map, have convinced me that the so-called Commission drew a series of maps which may be worse than anything the Democrat legislature would have come up with in California (in terms of 'coherent' districts).

Why those two? All I can see is a couple of East Bay districts that were going to be safe Dem no matter who was drawing the lines. There's plenty to hate about the Senate map but I'm curious as to why 11 & 15 are so bad.

1) WA-8. A quickly trending Democrat district that we have had to fight for tooth and nail in 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010 has now become a Republican district and Dave Reichert, after four bitter elections, will get to take a deep breathe for once. Plus, whenever I would draw WA maps on DRA I always would send WA-8 into the east when most folks here and at other sites would send WA-3 east or WA-8 north.

and he retains a lot of his base in Warren and Susse county. He has been my congressman and he is fairly popular but the vast majority of the district is in moderate Bergen county. Many of the towns will never go for him (Hackensack, Teaneck, Lodi). But others will (and have been for 10 years). But the Bergen GOP is killing each other right now and Garrett is probably vulnerable to a normal sounding Democrat with a big bankroll.

But Kathe Donovan has always been a lot more moderate than the GOP as a whole and she has marched to the beat of her own drummer. She kept her distance from Christie when she was elected in 2010 because Christie was in the middle of the controversy over his first budget and the changes he was seeking (lots of school funding cuts, war with NJEA). But Kathe Donovan was the only Republican consistently successful in Bergen. The party was rendered nearly extinct in the 2003-2009 period with Joe Ferriero running the Democratic party. It was so bad that the GOP was running through chairman and they were either evicted or nearly evicted from their party headquarters becuase their fundraising dried up from a lack of power, leadership, and competence.

The rift hasn't be resolved and these splits make general elections nearly impossible. In Passaic, our chairman just resigned and it was a good thing because there were two factions fighting to the death every year. And with towns like Paterson and Passaic included in the county....that meant years of losses.

It protects one of my very favorite Congressmen, a true rising star with an incredible résumé.

The primary electorate in that seat will cause Democrats to nominate some flaming progressive every single time (like George Badey), making Pat Meehan safer than Safe over the course of the decade.

I'm moving to PA-07 for school in August and it being my new home district where I'll register makes me like it even more, considering it protects one of my favorite Congressmen who will soon be MY Congressman.

2) Eh, no idea.

From IL-09, familial roots in MI-14, college in PA-02/07, and working for the summer in DC-AL.

who decides the Independence nominee? Could the state party committee overrule the county committee? What I read is that Brooks was selected by the Monroe County Independence Party. What if the state party decides to back Slaughter?

Because I played a small part and consulted with some involved in the map drawing process. The Republican engine of Horry County will continue to move this district more Republican year by year. Attaching some Democratic leaning Pee Dee counties allowed SC 5 to become more Republican and the shift in Jim Clyburn's district along the Georgia border put SC 2 firmly in the Rpublican column.

You know this better then I do that it was the backdoor fix to SC5 & SC2. It includes D area that Mulvaney loved giving up. That D area it could from SC6 it to take D area from SC2. Sweet deals indeed.

So the SC6 sinkhole and SC7 arrangement allows SC to be 5-2 or more likely 6-1 for the whole decade.

Hearing there are lots of Santorum folks at the CD-7 convention. Hoffman received Santorum's endorsement recently, so that helps her. But Byberg is also really organized, so it is going to be close for the endorsement. Byberg is stronger with Paul folks, who are making a push for national delegates and got a rules change earlier today to help them in that endeavor.

Also, apparently Bills is targeting the CD-7 convention stronger than Severson and Hegseth (who both are inexplicably putting a solid amount of time at the MNCR state convention, where there are relatively few delegates). It is more important for Senate candidates to woo delegates at the CD level, considering most CD and state slates are identical and all 3 candidates have pledged to abide by the party endorsement.

Losing a General Election in a landslide does not generally bode well for one's political future in Minnesota

Ask John Marty how his statewide ambitions are after losing to Carlson in 94. Or how about Mark Kennedy after losing to Klobuchar in 06. Or Skip Humphrey after coming in 3rd in the 98 governor's race. I am not sure that any of these three candidates really want THAT kind of mark around his neck.

The plan is to cut the PA House BY 50 seats, to 153. The Senate would stay at 50. Bad idea in my opinion, because bigger districts make incumbents harder to beat. Probably good for us in a partisan sense, tho, since we have more incumbents. Highly unlikely to pass.

I like the idea of two houses with massively different sizes (at least 3x differential) because that's a way to get a different set of representation in either chamber. Bicameral legislatures need to give two different perspectives or just be shrunk down to one chamber.

Thom Tillis is already gearing up and ready to go against her - if he were having second thoughts he'd have bailed out for the sure thing of NC-9 this year. The thought of Burr retiring is in fact likely to keep McHenry and/or Ellmers waiting and probably clears the primary field for him.

Top in DC. Yes party leadership is one route but look at this as far as Burr is concerned.

Hatch--ancient and in poltical trouble
Grassley-Ancient surely in last term
Snowe Retiring
Kyle-retiring
Crapo-nearly retired last time
Roberts-likely in last term
Enzi-68 right now
Cornyn-senate whip--likely leader one day
Coburn-self term limited-out in 2016
Thune-treasurey secretary or whip?
Burr--last in seniority.

By 2016 there could be only two or three people, maybe less, ahead of him in seniority on the top senate committee. Taxes, trade, social security, health care, medicare and more flow through committee. Burr could be on a fast track to importantville.

is usually when Senators get better committee assignments in general. No, Burr is on retirement watch for me not only for this but for the fact that his voting record has gotten significantly more mavericky since 2010. The big ones I'm thinking of are DADT Repeal and STOCK, but there have been a few smaller bills as well. A Republican running for re-election in North Carolina would not be taking some of the votes Burr has been lately.

I logged on around 10 eastern (an hour after you) and everything was fine, but there's a chance that it could have been down for a little while. Sometimes it's just your browser though. Whenever the site doesn't load for me, I quit Firefox or restart my computer, and that almost always does the trick.

You've got to be joking. If this weren't so in-the-weeds, I'd suspect the link to lead me to The Onion. This is hilarious, but also deserves head-scratching. It's not like Hansen Clake is some other white guy, and Peters isn't even from Wayne County.

District 28 looks almost like a sure pickup as the Democrats put up a losing 2010 House candidate who received about 30% as their nominee. This is a 61% McCain seat in Horry County that Sen. Dick Elliott is retiring from. Solicitor George Hembree is our nominee. Rating- Likely Republican. District 35 is an open D seat that went about 52% McCain that I am rating a tossup for now. Democrats have the mayor of Sumter's son, attorney Thomas McElveen running. I am also watching District 10, which went 53% McCain, has a black Democrat incumbent, we have a former House member, Jennings McAbee, running. Am rating it lean Democrat for now. Only two seats we have to watch are 20 (Senate President Courson) and 41, the seat of Glenn McConnell who is now Lt. Gov. There is a special election here as well. Paul Thurmond is running here. Both of our seats are likely Republican.
http://www.redracinghorses.com...

11, 26 and 27. Reece's Spartanburg district is too marginal to defeat him as an incumbent without a first rate challenger. This seat needs to become open. Setzler has too much personal strength. His district shifted to the left about 5% or so, and we couldn't beat him in the old seat. Three Republicans are running here but I'm not optimisitic. And Sheheen is too popular in his 55% McCain seat, he's running for Gov. again in two years. I think we can get to 29 seats this year from 27.

I remember one news site in Memphis on April 1 announcing that University of Memphis had been invited to join the SEC.
Ever since then I've been extremely skeptical of all news stories released on this date.

I've learned not to believe anything I read on this day that sounds the least bit suspicious or unrealistic. My favorite such story though was one that happened back in 1996 in USA Today where a headline stated that Taco Bell was purchasing naming rights to the Liberty Bell and it was going to be called the "Taco Liberty Bell". What's amazing is the number of people that apparently believed it, because Taco Bell's corporate office and the National Park Service got a bunch of angry calls from people opposed to the move.

The lead story on April Fools' Day that year was that 3 feet of snow was on the way. A lot of people passed it off as a joke; sure enough, the worst blizzard in a generation came a few hours later. The cruel part was that to that point, the winter of 96-97 had been one of the most mild in history.

about how Santorum is trying hard to get his supporters to make sure not to vote for anyone who favors Romney to be a state delegate here in WA. Then I get online and read this story. Interesting that what Santorum is trying to do in WA had happen to him in ND. I just laughted when I read from that story "The process, clearly, wasn't fair. Former NDGOP Chairman Gary Emineth, a Santorum supporter, called the delegate selection process a "railroad job."

North Dakota doesn't appear to have a true caucus. Those sites did NOT select delegates to go to the state convention; and so had no way to enforce their decision.
Instead the delegates to the state convention apparently having already been chosen in advance.

Doesn't appear to be any point in any future ND caucus for someone to attend that's not active throughout the year.

It went 2-1 Santorum-Paul. The other two Paul delegates lost by 3-4 votes each.

And of course, State Senator Gretchen Hoffman was crushed by 2010 nominee Lee Byberg today. Hoffman was just swamped by getting in late and not having the organization. Besides that, her team screwed up presenting the Santorum endorsement, even though the Santorum delegates were in the majority. It was hard to tell what was being shown when the message was shown on a big screen apparently. With the Paul forces largely behind Byberg and big numbers of Santorum folks sticking with him, he easily clinched the endorsement.

It is not expected for the NRCC to keep playing here with Byberg again.

I think the biggest surprise could be John Barrow. I cannot see him even coming close in his new seat, so he might realize towards the end that it may be best to end his career voluntarily, rather than being embarrassed with a bad loss.

Don Young is another possibility. I could see him getting an ally to file right before the deadline and then abruptly retiring right at the deadline.

Collin Peterson could surprise us all. Perhaps not a huge surprise, but John Mica could hang it up as well and allow Sandy Adams to keep her seat.

Suffolk has become the gold standard for MA. UNH is probably a cut above WNEY and UMass Lowell, which are both newer to the polling scene and haven't proven themselves yet. PPP and ARG both did well here in 2010.

There is an independent operation which tends to be very good, and was spot on in 2010.

Then there are their polls with the Globe. These tend not to push undecideds(they give undecided as an option rather than waiting for voters to chose it), and often use strange wording. In 2010 they released one of the most useless statewide polls ever showing every candidate for downballot office ranging randomly between 27% and 33%.

I am sure at least 35% are planning to vote for Warren and at least 37% for Brown. Its not so much that the poll is bad as that its useless for drawing any sorts of conclusions or info.

Though fyi, having talked to a bunch of Massachusetts Democrats last week I get the impression most of them think Brown is up 5 or so.

Dalrymple wins nomination with about 70% of the convention vote against architect Paul Sorum. Apparently Sorum's speech was very well received, he might be one to keep an eye on in the future. http://bismarcktribune.com/new...

Saying he's sick and tired of being called "numbnuts" by friends and colleagues alike, Deputy Majority Leader Reed Gusciora announced his bid for Governor in 2013 to a throng of supporters outside the state house today. The eighth term Assemblyman will run on the Real Liberal Democratic line, and will select a Lieutenant Governor's pick, "once he finds another one."

"Once the tax revenue comes rolling in from the new casinos, marijuana sales and same-sex marriage licenses, nobody will ever hear of property taxes again."

Finally Gusciora commented upon the growing rift between the north and south regions of the state. "On day one I plan on signing an Executive Order making it illegal to refer to "North" or "South" Jersey," said Gusciora. "In fact, I plan on introducing a measure just to simply call our state 'Jersey'.

Looking at the candidate list, there are 7 Republicans running. I seem to remember that state Rep. Alecia Webb-Edgington is the establishment favorite. Obviously, from the above it appears that Thomas Massie is the Paulite candidate. It would also appear that Boone County Judge-Executive Gary Moore would be a strong candidate too(Boone County is part of metro Cincinnati). None of the others appear to be strong candidates, although I guess it's important to be mindful of James Lankford coming out of seemingly nowhere to beat several more experienced candidates in OK-5 back in 2010.

One of the candidates is Marcus Carey, a prominent blogger and Republican politico. There are rumors that he wanted a job with Massie and didn't get it (both have certain connections to the same folks that elected Rand Paul), so he then decided to run himself.

And the size of the buy was $7,000- just enough to get on for the game. The only other candidate to make a buy was Carey, a $200 cable run. CN2 has a good write-up: http://mycn2.com/politics/mass...

The reason I pick MI-07 is that it cleanly and subtlety helps Tim Walberg. It's by no means an easy district, but it takes out his worst area because of Mark Schauer and RINO Joe Schwarz are no longer in the district. It also removes 1/2 of Scio Township, giving that to John Dingell. It doesn't encroach on the good areas of Upton, Amash, or Rogers either. While the partisan changes are minor, if any, the removal of Walberg's worst area is a big win in changes.

MI-08 - Chairman - Livingston County Republican Party Since 2013 - Opinions are my own and not that of LCRP.